Blocks: Course dedication
Aday TalaveraIntroduction
This block allows to see the estimated dedication time to a Moodle course by the participants of the course.
How dedication time is estimated?
Time is estimated based in the concepts of Session and Session duration applied to Moodle's log entries:
- Click: every time that a user access to a page in Moodle a log entry is stored.
- Session: set of two or more consecutive clicks in which the elapsed time between every pair of consecutive clicks does not overcome an established maximum time.
- Session duration: elapsed time between the first and the last click of the session.
Features
This block is intended to be used only by teachers, so students aren't going to see it and their dedication time. However, block can be configured to show dedication time to students too.
Teachers can use a tool to analyse dedication time within a course. The tool provides three views:
- Dedication time of the course: calculates total dedication time, mean dedication time and connections per day for each student.
- Dedication time of a group: the same but only for choosed group members.
- Dedication of a student: detailed sessions for a student with start date & time, duration and ip.
The tools have a link to download all data in spreadsheet format. The use is restricted by a capability to teachers and admins only.
This block cannot be used in the site page, only in courses pages.
All texts in English and Spanish (AMOS).
Available versions- Moodle 2.0 - 2.6: old Moodle 2 version.
- Moodle 2.7+ / 3.x+: Moodle 2.7 brought a new log system, so the plugin needed to be redone to use this new system. If you have upgraded your site from older versions (2.6 or below) you will need to enable legacy logging in Moodle administration to get dedication time. If you restore a course from an older version in a newer version, you won't have any problem.
Support
Support is offered in English and Spanish in these forum discussions:
- English discussion: https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=109487
- Spanish discussion: https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=109489
Code repository: https://bitbucket.org/ciceidev/moodle_block_dedication
Issues: https://bitbucket.org/ciceidev/moodle_block_dedication/issues
Credits
This block was developed and produced by CICEI at Las Palmas de Gran Canaria University.
First version for Moodle 1.9 by Borja Rubio Reyes.
Updated and improved version for Moodle 2.x and 3.x by Aday Talavera Hierro.
Useful links
Screenshots
Contributors
I really think a feature like this should be part of the Moodle Core, it's so frustrating to have to rely on plugin authors who've lost interest.
I really think a feature like this should be part of the Moodle Core, it's so frustrating to have to rely on plugin authors who've lost interest.
I only do a minor change to support themes based in Bootstrap 4. If you have any issues don't hesitate to publish them on Bitbucket issues tracker.
Also I must remember to everyone that this is a free project and I accept any help in form of pull request to solve the issues reported on Bitbucket issues tracker. Usually the plugin updates were sponsored by the CICEI center. Borja and me worked in the CICEI for few years. But for the last 4-5 years, I updated the plugin whenever I have been able to do it.
Please, can you upgrade this block so that it can be used in the site page or in course pages?
Thanks in advance.
Thank you for volunteering your time and sharing your helpful work with the Moodle community! Very useful tool for instructors and for students--many times a student is unaware of their work habits and the Course Dedication tool provides this useful metric. For any future versions, I was wondering if there was a way to track students based on meta-course enrollments (for example, if they were enrolled in a medical program and had meta-enrollments or cohort enrollments in a group of courses, to track their time across those cohorts and/or meta-enrollments).
Thank you again for your contribution, and I wish there was a way we could get you more support and funding!
One student spent 3 hours of his time in Moodle, but only counted 53 minutes. The "Limit between clicks (in minutes)" setting is 60 minutes.
What's wrong, can you please help?
Regards,
Antonio